Circuit Courts of Appeals

Circuit Courts of Appeals Congress established the federal circuit courts in the Judiciary Act of 1789 and divided the country into three circuits, each of which contained several states. The circuit courts performed both trial and appellate functions and, until 1869, were staffed by federal district court judges and by U.S. Supreme Court justices riding circuit. The difficulty of travel to many of the circuits made circuit riding a hardship, and the practice fell into disuse by the 1840s. The district judges were thus left to conduct business of both the districts and circuits, which made appellate duties impossible. Congress attempted to remedy the situation in the Judiciary Act of 1869 by creating a circuit judgeship in each of the then nine circuits.

As the jurisdiction of the federal courts expanded, the business of both the circuit and district courts increased, and the circuit judges attended mostly to trial work. This put pressure on the Supreme Court, as appellate review was either unavailable in the circuit courts or judges were reviewing their own work. Congress attempted a remedy in the Evarts Act in 1891 (see judiciary act of 1891), which established the United States circuit courts of appeals and transferred all appellate work to them. Congressional traditionalists, however, refused to abolish the old circuit courts, and the courts retained original trial jurisdiction over capital cases, tax cases, and diversity cases where the amount in controversy exceeded the district court's limit. Congress increasingly became convinced that the circuit courts were dispensable, and in a 1911 statute it made the district courts the exclusive federal trial courts. The circuit courts ceased to exist on 1 January 1912. The circuit courts of appeal were renamed the courts of appeal in 1948.

See also Judicial Power and Jurisdiction; Lower Federal Courts.

Rayman L. Solomon